The Journey
by Fabius Maximus
Summary: Set After the Pirate King. The Boss is leaving the Colonies, but someone is definitely following his fleet...
1. Chapter 1

_This is the second part of the Pirate King Series. Note that it also takes place in the same continuity as the Last Imperial Fleet and Exiles on the Wind. _

_Why wasn't I surprised?_ Todd wondered. The reaction to the news that a fleet, a _large_ fleet, had escaped had resulted in enough recriminations to make him wonder if he could get away with shooting everyone else in the command center. It'd give him some peace and quiet until they resurrected.

"First _Galactica, _then _Pegasus_ and now this?" A Three asked.

"Plus the other ships and ground units on the Colonies." A Five muttered.

"Why are you all fracking surprised?" Todd finally said. "Did you expect them to just roll over and die? Read the records of the first war. We caught them by surprise there as well." He gestured at Caprica. "That's an entire world and there are twelve more like it, not counting asteroids, secondary colonies and frak knows what else, and it's _hard_ to kill a world, much less twelve, especially since you want to live on them for the greater glory of God."

"Have you located them yet, brother?" A fellow One asked, in the 'adults are talking,' voice.

"No_." _Todd told him, "or at least not completely."

Finding a ship was hard— you could get a limited direction and distance reading off a jump, but those elements quickly degraded, making it useless after any more than an hour or so. Even when such a trace was made, it would often simply describe a sphere several light-seconds or even light minutes in diameter, and that meant flooding the space with raiders, who could try and catch the light speed evidence of an FTL emergence— the light, radiation and gravitic emissions. The raiders had managed to keep track of the fleet, sort of, but it was jumping fast enough that they hadn't been able to concentrate.

"I still think we should have attacked— our Raiders had nukes," a Six said.

"Not enough to kill them, and it would have alerted them to the fact they were being tracked…which I might add, Colonial tech isn't that great at. All it would have ensured is that they know we can follow them." Todd paused, "Ideally, they're trying to find some place to land and live— and if they do, we have them. Wait until the majority of their population is on the ground and kill them." He paused, "Of course, that's hard to do from here, so can I _please_ have my basestars and go?"

The others looked at each other and nodded.

"We've voted and agreed."

"Thank you for the glory of democracy. Next to the glory of religion one of the most wonderful inventions of humanity," Todd replied sarcastically as he left the room. On the way out, the other One stopped him.

"Some of the others are wondering about your determination."

"Really? Elder Brother?"

"He's with the _Galactica _fleet."

"Great. So at the very time we need someone to ride herd on that mob in there, he goes off chasing vengeance."

"It was very odd, all of the Five being on that fleet."

"If you want religion Brother, go talk to Six. You'll get an earful."

"That's not what I'm here to talk about…we are having some worries about you."

_We, meaning the other Ones, since we're the ones running the show, whatever anyone else thinks._

"Oh?"

"You voted against the attack."

"I did, because it was a bloody stupid idea, as even a blind man could see. Elder brother's obsession is his, not mine."

"That could be a dangerous attitude."

"Your saying people have been bringing up boxing?"

"I'm saying that it would be very wise if you were successful."

"I will be. I have to be. It's now a matter of our survival, because you can bet the survivors from _this_ attack aren't just going to find a world and sit on it, fat dumb and happy."

With that, Todd turned on his heel and headed for the heavy raider bay.

"Really, sibling rivalry must be terrible."

Todd didn't slow down. The last thing the others needed to hear about was him having aural and visual hallucinations. He'd considered committing suicide and seeing if it was a problem with this particular body, but that would be giving in to the same sort of illogical actions that plagued the others.

"Of course, it was a bit harder on the Colonials…"

_Not listening._

"I know. You do a very nice job of ignoring me…but can you ignore yourself…aren't you _proud?_ An entire species, driven to the brink of extinction."

"They're driving _me_ to the brink of extinction," Todd finally muttered, safely away from the others.

"I know. Well, I'll leave you alone…but just one question."

Todd stopped and glared at the hallucination. For some reason beyond sanity his brain insisted on making it look like Gaius Baltar, that self-absorbed and unwitting participant in his species' near murder.

"_What._"

"Just a simple question… you can tell me the answer later. What have the _cylons_ produced? Not warships or computer worms… things of innate value in and of themselves. If you do destroy all the humans…what do you have to offer the universe?" With that, the hallucination vanished.

"As if I have time to worry about that." Todd muttered and continued to his raider.

TBC


	2. Chapter 2

_Fleet: 10 days after departure._

* * *

><p>"Good news, we've managed to get all the KEW weapons on the battlestars operational." There was a pause and Doeg continued, "Bad news, we don't have the people to crew them."<p>

"Vipers?" James asked.

"Lots," Tasmin said, "If you mean Viper _pilots_, just over 240."

"We're going to have to fix that." James said, looking around at the CIC of the battlestar Archeron.

The Archeron was as big, actually slightly larger than the _Pegasus _class. Designed at the end of the first war, the class had been intended to anchor _Jupiter _class battlegroups with a combination of larger flight group and more extensive weapons systems. In fact, unlike the later _Pegasus class_, the lower landing bays were actually smaller in order to allow the retractable pods to accept an impressive KEW and point defense battery.

And that was what had eventually killed it— the end of the war had ended the line of battle conflicts the Archeron had been designed for and while functional, it's lower bays were somewhat cramped, and in fact had been mostly used as a secondary landing bay for shuttles and other auxiliary craft, the external doors being used to pressurize the bays. The Archeron was still a powerful line of battle warship, but without any battles to engage in, the ships size and cost made it a simple decision to retire it in favor of the more advanced Pegasus class, which, due to it's more advanced systems, required a somewhat smaller crew.

_Which sort of explains this…_ James thought, looking over the vast CIC space. Limited function computer stations were set up in an almost stadium style, facing the main plotting boards. The Archeron and Athena between them probably needed more CIC personnel than a half dozen of the newer designs.

Which presented a problem.

"Okay, fastest rote training we can do…how soon can we put together a full crew."

"Months…"

"We have survivors from the other battlestars…" James pointed out.

"Problem is that if we scatter them all over, we ensure we don't have _any_ combat capable ships," Tasmin said. "Same goes for the cruisers."

James nodded. A crew couldn't be just commanded into being— it needed trust, to where each member knew that their crewmates w3ere doing what they needed to do. The cruisers, B_ig Stick_ and a few other ships were smaller than the eight battlestars, but arguably were more effective right now. A mob, even one made up of the most powerful warships ever forged by man, was no match for a trained force.

"So what do we do?"

"We've distributed the ship's crews of the civilian ships across the fleet and that gives us enough to sort of crew these ships." James said.

In fact, most of the civilian ships, save for the large ones which could not be abandoned, were currently riding in the hanger bays of the 18 transports. Some James intended to keep, while others would eventually be scavenged, but at least their crews were available.

_Go back to the Colonies?_ There had to be more people back there. Maybe even more trained soldiers. After all, they'd rescued nearly 1500 pilots and crewmen off the crippled ships on the Line, though sadly none above captain, a fact which James knew annoyed Tasmin greatly.

No. It was a catch 22. He couldn't risk the few effective warships to go back to the Colonies, yet they couldn't depend on the luck that had helped them escape and whatever the losses of the Cylons, they had far more ships than he had. If he _had_ the combat effective ships, he wouldn't need more crews.

No, at least for now, returning to the Colonies was out of the question.

"Any of the surviving crews have training experience?"

"Not many," Tasmin replied.

"Fine, first thing, we need to get a baseline of what everyone knows. I'll talk to the Dean, it's a test, he should be happy, but I want a data base on everyone in this fleet. If a 12 year old builds models of battlestars, we need to know." He paused, "Secondly, let's focus on the defensive equipment— if we stick to the point defense and AA batteries, that'll reduce our manning problems, right?"

"Yah."

"Okay, let's get started."

* * *

><p>"What?" Carla said in a monotone as Terrence poked his head into her small cabin, noting the fact that her single dufflebag looked stuffed.<p>

"Boss says you can do it, and we need you."

"Boss knows that _Rattletrap_ was the biggest ship I'd ever commanded right?"

"Yeah, but you were second officer on that bulk freighter."

"A _bulk freighter is not a battlestar!"_ Carla's howl echoed throughout the ship.

Terrence paused, and looked at his boss. Carla looked…depressed.

"It's a great promotion."

"It's desperation." Carla said. "Do you know what this means?"

"What?"

"There were no flag or command officers. We didn't save a fraking one."

Terrance didn't say anything about that. Once they'd gotten the fleet away, he'd been ordered to BSG27, the _Orpheus. _The Andromeda class gun/battlestar had looked almost pristine…but the inside…

Terrence shook his head, feeling bile rise again. The compartments that had been opened to vacuum were bad enough— it was plain that the group hadn't even had a chance to go to Action stations. But the sealed components— the centurions had made a quick run though the ship— in some cases, they'd just blown the doors, but in other cases, they'd actually pressurized the room and gone in and finished things hand to hand. Terrence didn't understand _why_ they had done it. The stories from the First Cylon war, as most were talking about it, were full of atrocities, but they more often than not had some logical reasoning— this was as if someone wanted to murder a few helpless Colonials and leave the others do die after they'd heard their friends die. Not only that, but the cylons had _removed_ a few bodies, mostly from the compartments they'd cut into.

Which was just weird, but Terrence figured he could deal with weird as long as he never had to see a blood covered compartment again.

"Well," he said, "I figure that you should be the big boss then—I mean, how old is-"

"No," Carla said. "That's final. And don't even bring it up."

"But-"

"_No."_ Carla frowned at her duffel bag and tried to pull the zipper closed. "Here's the thing. Colonel Tasmin is willing to overlook _Archeron _and _Athena. _After all, we found one and…er, technically refitted the other to be a monument. But these other ships— they're all _active duty_ battlestars. She isn't about to just hand them over, she can't. So they're under the command of Colonial officers."

"So declare you a Colonial officer. Problem solved."

"Problem not solved. Tasmin can't promote civilians."

"Well, she's going to have a hard time finding anyone to do it."

Carla sighed, and then finally got the duffel bag shut. "Look, here's the problem. We don't _want_ Tasmin to start ignoring the rules, for two reasons. Firstly, you'll notice that she has most of the ground soldiers— you know, the marines with the guns? The local defense forces, the 12,000 odd people that salute and ask 'how high' when she tells them to jump?"

"Yeah?"

"We really want her to not start talking about how you don't need laws when you have guys with guns."

Terrence fell silent. Pirates tended to be fairly democratic within their organization— you couldn't get very far with threats, not in the long-term and so even the Boss had to worry about opinion. Tasmin, at least right now..didn't.

"I see."

"Yeah. Here's the second thing. She knows that sooner or later one of us will probably have to take command, but this way, it's gradual, and she lets her own people know that they're still soldiers and that she's not ignoring the book. There are some procedures for long-term detached duty, but…" Carla paused. "When she does that, she really admits to everyone that the Colonies are gone, gone, gone."

"So you're gonna be playing second fiddle."

"Being that I've never even been on this battlestar's bridge before, for all of our sakes I hope so."

* * *

><p>Lybock Bay Transport <em>Mount Hope<em>

_I do hope this works,_ Dean Markson thought. Some argued that it was too soon to start. They were fools. They would _never_ be safe again, and so there was no reason to postpone what would have to be done anyway. Behind him was a welding crew and his assistants— some of the students on the _Caprica_ had been studying engineering and ship systems…

_Which means I only have them for a short time. _There were simply too many things that needed to be done in the fleet to allow him to have even partially trained workers for any longer than absolutely needed.

"Normally, we would use tubes, but the available materials are limited, as are the production facilities." Markson had asked and in no uncertain terms had been informed that every bit of available fabrication capacity was going to getting the damaged battlestars fully operational. "We'll be putting in troughs here, and here," he indicated the plans he'd had drawn up yesterday. Theoretically, Dr. Lanis should be handling this, as she was an engineer, but she, and all the advanced students were currently involved in both physical and software based repairs. "The algae these troughs produce will allow us to feed the fish farms we'll be establishing in the other compartments.

"Aren't these a little small?" A female student asked. "The vehicle bays would be better."

"If we could be certain the ship would never be attacked, yes, but these rooms can be sealed off more easily. That eliminates the issue of a 'fraking flood' as the Colonel so elegantly put it."

"That's going to be labor intensive."

"We have unskilled labor, at least for now."

"Oh?"

"Why haven't you heard? Chores were invented to keep 12-year-olds out of trouble."

_And hopefully keep them from dwelling on the fact that everyone they know is likely dead._

Of course, there was one unintended benefit of going for the schools, which was most of the survivors had friends, siblings and teachers they knew. Markson shuddered to think about what things would have been like if they'd just had a random collection of people tossed together.


End file.
